PSA to printed zine makers

As a 37 year old who's been running a sole proprietorship for the last 10+ years, I just want everyone who is planning to run a fandom project that involves accepting money for printing & shipping costs to know that you're actually running a small business and you need to plan for taxes. It doesn't matter if you don't make any profit: that is business income and the IRS will see it as such if you get audited.

If you only take enough money in to cover the cost of printing & shipping then you can write that off as a business expense and probably not pay taxes on it, But in order for that to fly you actually have to do business accounting, especially if you're doing it at scale. Like, you can probably skate by without reporting a $500 project; I absolutely would not fucking risk it with a $5000 project.

Back when I was producing shows there were years when I was where I made $20k in ticket sales only to turn around and immediately pay $18k to my performers. I only made $2k for myself, but I had to report the entire $20k, because it was ALL INCOME. (I only paid taxes on the $2000, because that's how writing off expenses works!)

Yeah this is boring grownup shit and I'm getting my boring grownup fingers all over your fun fandom, but boring grownups doing boring grownup things are the reason fandom spaces exist at all (paying for servers is deeply boring), and I'm way more fun than an audit